OK, admittedly this is an easy target, but Piers Akerman deserves a special honorary nomination for the Agincourt Award for the Longest Bow in Journalism (honorary because nobody would mistake him for a journalist).
To attempt to summarise the piece that earned the nomination would only rob you, dear reader, of the surreal delights of attempting to discern the unifying theme in this meditation that draws together these disparate events and blames them all on (boo! hiss!):
“years of politically correct indoctrination from Left-leaning social engineers particularly in the media, legal and teaching professions, which have left many gravely dysfunctional people in their wake”:
- The Merrylands machete-gang attacks.
- Indigenous grog problems, which are Gough Whitlam’s fault.
- A US transsexual who got some media coverage, apparently.
- A WA Senator-elect who is in a relationship with a transsexual.
- The 60 minutes story of the father-daughter incest couple.
- Some problem with the ABC’s coverage of 10th anniversary of the MUA waterfront dispute.
- Dawkins reforms.
- The Stolen Generation.
That’s right LPers, it’s all your fault that John Deaves screwed his daughter.
Based on Piers’ impressively broad source material, it seems that since nobody in Canberra will take his calls any more, he just occupies his time channel-surfing and reading the more lurid sections of USA Today.
But we shouldn’t be too hasty to dismiss Piers’ thesis here. He may have tapped some deeper zeitgeist, along with the wild-eyed and disheveled man who regaled my subway car between 42nd and 86th street this week, making essentially the same points as Akerman did in this tract.
The piece stands as a stark warning of what can happen to one’s faculties during a bibulous decline into soapbox raving. You have been warned.
Perhaps Piers can now go gently into retirement with one more trophy – an Agincourt Award – to adorn his cabinet?
**UPDATE** Agincourt Award nominations are open to all-comers. If you spot a candidate in your travels, please bring the article to the attention of LP Admins and it too can join the finalists!
Yes, he is very like one of those poor raving loonies you see shambling down the street from time to time, muttering to themselves and shouting the odd half-incoherent curse at the world around them. A world they fear and utterly fail to understand.
Dunno about you, but I generally cross the road when I see them coming.
Still, he’s probably more fortunate than most.
At least he’s not sleeping rough and has those nice people at the Terrorgraph to look after him. They no doubt make sure that he takes his medications on a semi-regular basis and can call the doctor if he has a nasty turn and starts to foam.
Bravo! I knew one of Johnnie’s Huggers would make the world Raving Ratbag Journo rankings; but this effort must put an Oz in medal contention!
Adds new depths to the meaning of Rabid Rightwinger!
If he wins, will it earn him an OzPost stamp?
What about Phil and his aperient column in the Oz? He still hasn’t been offered any award for his puff piece on the need for crowd control in the living room of the late Dr Jim Cairns. While Dr Cairns was delivering his sermons it was necessary for Phil to arrange the bodies: sit here…move your legs…can you move along and make more room…room for one more over there in the corner. Mind you, Phil’s duties didn’t end there. He told us that government agents had infiltrated the young Trotskyites and it was his duty to overeye their activities. With all those distractions how on earth did Phil find time to listen to the good doctor?
And spare a thought for Mrs Cairns. There she was trying to prepare the tea and scones while government agents and Trotskyites battled for the hearts and minds of the uncommitted.
Phil gets my vote.
Phil who?
I think Randi Goodman is referring to Philip Adams, aka the anti-christ to your average right wing death beast (if you ignore Clive Hamilton).
I think, to cheer Piers up, we ought to enter him here, he’d appreciate it much more than a journalistic award.
I’m not fooled. “Randi Goodman” is obviously a sock. Piers has been up early vanity googling.
OMG! Not game to try it, Dave.
Don’t kniw if there are any awards for politicians’ performances in TV interviews, but having watched him several times now (like this morning on Insiders) I reckon Andrew Robb might be a bit of a dill.
Brendan Nelson, meanwhile, is stuck inside a Beatles song still trying to get out.
Which song? It can’t be “I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends” - that would go against the whole Liberal party ethos.
I think it might be “Help” that he’s stuck in.
“Randi Goodman” makes the Left sound incredibly ineffectual.
Why, therefore, was ASIO wasting taxpayers’ resources surveilling this scone-loving folks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIO_File
when they could have been going after some real terrorists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustasha
or perhaps even some genuine war criminals
http://www.jewishmag.com/48mag/nazis/nazis.htm
Nowhere Man.
(That is a Beatles’ saong, isn’t it, or have I got the title wrong.Music is a bit beyond me.
D’Oh! Never thought of “Nowhere Man”. Fool on the Hill would fit Brendan nicely:
Wow. The only unifying theme in Piers’ rant appears to be his own madness.
That’s an impressively disconnected piece of writing.
Piers’ incoherence is surpassed only by that of his commenters.
I made the mistake of reading that comments thread and now I have to have another shower, and it isn’t even lunchtime yet.
Yeah, I started reading the comments too. All I can say is, “WTF? We let these people vote, FFS.”
Fortunately I haven’t had my shower yet, but it’s an impetus to get on with it.
Decided to read the blog. I couldn’t refrain from posting a comment which basically said Ackerman was a joke as a journalist, a political commrntator and a political reporter. It’ll probably won’t see the light of day.
Incidentally, noticed the right wing dinosaur with whom I occasionally do battle in the local press is one of Piers’ acolytes. Though his comment on this piece of sludge was surprisingly reasonable.
“I made the mistake of reading that comments thread and now I have to have another shower, and it isn’t even lunchtime yet.”
You should have read the comments threads when Piers went on about Heiner, it was even spilling over onto the other Telegraph columnist blogs. I remember reading one of Malcolm Farr’s columns covering the day-to-day happenings of the new government, (and this was about six-nine months after some Coalition backbenchers were considering tabling documents about Heiner, but decided it would reflect badly on them) and Farr was trying to patiently describe why the Heiner story had no legs. Which of courses the poor guy after about twenty or thirty postings diagnosed those overzealous Piers-olytes as suffering from “Heiner derangement syndrome” and seemed to have little success in returning the focus of the comment threads back to what was actually happening in parliament.
But me I’m waiting for the next Piers installment (insert spooky music) - Kevin Rudd was actually secretly engineered from the stem-cells of Adolf Hitler, who was sent during childhood to work with the Maoists to establish a left-right coaxis of evil that would seize control through the instruments of the United Nations, allowing for the construction of a world-state of latte-drinking transexuals programmed through their viewing of public television to commit genocide (although its not genocide if its against an indigenous population) against those patriotic ordinary working people who failed to attend the requisite amount of avant-garde film or theatre productions prescribed in Kevin’s little red book.
That’s very good, Stephen, but you need to get the word ‘postmodern’ in there somewhere. Wrongly used, of course.
Ken at Road to Surfdom has uncovered a new term - “Islamo-Nazis” - maybe that could figure in a Piersian crusade?
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2008/04/13/war-against-evil/
Akerlite writes: “It is plain that a lot of what is published and broadcast also suffers through a lack of critical editorial direction”. If that were the case, the fat bag of shit would be out on his ear. Just like his mentor Frank Devine, Akerlite is a New Limited house retainer, that is, a long-time servant attached to a household, who, having spent a working life doing the master’s every bidding no matter how demeaning is allowed in his dotage to hang around doing light work even though it is useless.
His rave is quite amusing in the sense that it’s become a parody of itself. I love the idea of “blaming” Whitlam for the Enlightenment. Could it have been Whitman, perhaps, Piers?
Why not go the whole hog, Piers, and blame Frank Hardy, Nugget Coombs, or even John Anderson who started us all on the slippery slope in 1927.
Oh, and Piers, go and get the dry cleaning, will you? There’s a good chap.
Yes I forget to mention
- Global cooling (an evil scientific conspiracy)
- the teaching of phonics
- politically correct policing
- left-wing academics/public-service/teachers/greenkeepers/lawyers/scientists/soccer-players/panel-beaters/child-care workers/calligraphers etc.
- Mem Fox’s children books
- harm minimisation drug policies
- Media Watch
- anti-war (oops it was almost ant-war) demonstrators.
- David Hicks terrorist appeasers Francophiles
- Justice Michael Kirby
- The “rescued” generation
- The David Flint “elites”
- Those anti letter of the law high-court judges
- Fairfax media
- the internet
- Teachers unions and other assorted unionist thugs
They will all be in “Piers Akerman: The Musical” coming soon. For a hint it will be a little like Chilean Roberto Bolano’s satirical book “Nazi Literature in the Americas” about the right-wing blowhards in Bolano’s home and adopted countries.
http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Literature-Americas-Roberto-Bolano/dp/0811217051
The blurb beneath Porkerman’s pic on the blog alleges that he is “the best read columnist..”.
Presumably that was intended to mean widely read (perhaps of press releases, certainly nothing original or of intrinsic worth)but is yet another sad demonstration of the decline of simple prose.
Mark wrote:
Only so the right wing can take back “fascist” - I’m sure they’re ruing the day they let their favourite word go.